Lasting Damage: A Rogue Prosecutor’s Final Case

Claude Stuart, after a career full of trouble as a prosecutor in Queens, finally went too far when he lied to a judge in an effort to convict a man of murder.

Tyronne Johnson at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, N.Y. Johnson remains in prison even after the prosecutor, who handled his case and lied to a judge in an effort to convict him of murder, has been exposed and disgraced. (Andrew Burton for ProPublica)

Among the thousands of prosecutors who have tried cases in
the name of the people of New York City, Claude Stuart came to hold a handful
of unfortunate distinctions:

• He was a serial abuser of his
authority. State appellate courts reversed three convictions based on his
wrongdoing.

• His misconduct actually led to disciplinary
action by his superiors. He lost his job, and eventually his law license, after an appellate court
determined he had lied to a judge about the whereabouts of a key witness.

• The particulars of his disciplinary proceedings became public, opening a window into
the typically secretive panels that are supposed to police the state’s lawyers.

Stuart declined repeated requests for comment for this
story.

It’s worth it, then, to appreciate the impact of Stuart’s
career in greater detail, how the misconduct took place, how it has complicated
the continuing pursuit of justice, and how the consequences of Stuart’s
misconduct still linger, years after the man himself was exposed and disgraced.

The People v. Tyronne Johnson,
Stuart’s last trial as a prosecutor in Queens, is a
perfect case to trace those issues.

The Crime:

On Feb. 24, 2000, Queens
prosecutors charged 23-year-old Tyronne Johnson with
the murder of Leroy Vann. Three weeks earlier, Vann, an owner of a nightclub
that Johnson frequented in Jamaica, Queens, had been shot in the stomach at
3:20 a.m. while standing in front of his home.

Vann stumbled inside, tumbled behind a couch and called
for his elderly mother, Mary Puryear. His mother
later testified that Vann had told her that a man named “Tyronne”
from a nearby housing project had shot him in a botched robbery attempt with at
least one other man, according to court records.

Police officer John Blandino
said he interviewed Vann as an ambulance sped them to a local hospital.

“Leroy, listen here, you have a big hole in your chest,” Blandino said, according to court testimony. “There is a
chance you might not make it, but let us catch this person that did this to
you. Tell me about Tyronne.”

Vann, coughing and sputtering blood, repeated what he told
his mother and added that Tyronne drove a white Lincoln
Navigator, according to the officer.

When Johnson was questioned that morning, he volunteered
to go to the precinct for questioning and told police he “wouldn’t shoot Leroy,
he’s a friend,” according to court records. He was released after police interrogated
him for several hours.

Two weeks later, Daniel Small, a man in police custody for
a separate offense identified Johnson in a photo array, saying he had confessed
the crime to him. Johnson was arrested days later. Thirteen years after that
arrest, Johnson maintains what he asserted at the time: He had played no
role in the killing.

The Trial:

By the time pre-trial proceedings began in spring 2002,
Small had died.

Stuart, lacking any physical evidence, told the court and
Johnson’s defense lawyer that he would rely chiefly on the testimony of Blandino and Puryear to make his
case.

But the day before the trial, Stuart dropped what amounted
to a bomb, telling the defense he intended to present a third witness: a 22-year-old
man named Henry Hanley, who lived across the street from Vann and had fled when
police first tried to interview him days after the murder.

Hanley was arrested in March 2000 on a probation violation and questioned about the
murder. He said he was paid to be a lookout while Johnson and another man
murdered Vann in an attempt to rob him. He agreed to testify against Johnson in
exchange for a light sentence for his involvement.

Hanley wasn’t Stuart’s only late surprise. He also waited until just before
trial to share with Johnson’s lawyer a potentially critical piece of evidence:
the police statement of Shanise
Knight, a relative of Hanley’s.

Knight had told investigators that she had seen a man
confront Vann minutes before the shooting. She described the man as about 35
years old, six feet tall and 230 pounds. Johnson was 23, stood 5 feet, 6
inches, and had a much slighter build, weighing about 140 pounds. Knight had
not identified Johnson when she was shown a photo array of possible suspects that
included his picture.

Johnson’s lawyer, understandably, wanted to call Knight as
a witness, but he could not locate her. He asked Stuart repeatedly during the trial if he knew where
she was. Stuart said he didn’t.

Court records show that on June 4, 2002, Judge Jaime Rios,
who was overseeing the trial, also asked Stuart if he knew where Knight was.
Stuart again said he didn’t, adding that he, too, was trying to find her.

Johnson was convicted the next day of second-degree
murder. He was sentenced to 20 years to life.

In an interview at Sing Sing
Correctional Facility, Johnson’s face was grim when he recalled hearing the
verdict read.

“I felt broken inside,” he said.

The Reversal:

The verdict was only hours old when Johnson’s family and
lawyer set about mounting an appeal.

And it didn’t take long for that effort to provide a
shocking revelation. Michael Race, a private investigator hired by the family,
tracked down Knight. Knight, for the first time, told her story to Johnson’s
side. And there was much more to it than she had initially told police.

Knight said she could discredit Hanley’s critical
testimony. She told Johnson’s investigator that Hanley had been neither an
accomplice to the crime nor a witness to it. She said he had been staying with
her and was downstairs, asleep, when the shooting occurred. Knight said she
woke him when she heard the gunshots. She ultimately signed an affidavit to that effect.

But she had one more explosive bit of information. She
said in her sworn statement that Stuart not only had known where she was during
the trial, but that he and two police detectives had visited her at her job just
days before Stuart had insisted to Judge Rios that he did not know where she
was.

More of Stuart’s case soon seemed to crumble, as well.
When Race went to see Hanley in prison, Hanley signed an affidavit in which he recanted his trial
testimony and alleged that he was pressured by Stuart to accuse Johnson.

“I did not witness this incident into the death of Leroy
Vann,” Hanley’s affidavit said. “I want the court to know and understand what I
have previously done was a great error.”

A television station aired an interview with Knight in which she
described her meeting with Stuart. The segment also featured Hanley’s
girlfriend, SharmaineRamdass,
who confirmed that she and Hanley were asleep at the time of the murder.

Later that year, Stuart’s supervisors agreed to have
Johnson’s conviction vacated. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown wrote a letter to Judge Rios saying as much,
adding that Stuart’s conduct could not “be condoned.”

The Disciplinary Process:

It is impossible to know how many prosecutors get reported
to the state’s disciplinary panels for alleged misconduct. What is clear is
that the appellate judges who overturn convictions because of misconduct don’t
routinely refer the offending prosecutors to the disciplinary committees.
Defense lawyers, for their part, are often reluctant to complain formally,
fearful that they will incur the wrath of prosecutors they will have to deal
with again and again.

But Stuart’s conduct in the Johnson case did provoke a
referral. The trial judge, after vacating the conviction, sent District Attorney Brown’s
letter to the
disciplinary panel, known formally as the Second Department Grievance
Committee.

Brown had been blunt in his letter: He said Stuart’s
handling of the Johnson case “was totally inconsistent with the high ethical
standards that I expect from my assistants” and that his office would pursue an
investigation. “If disciplinary action against the assistant is appropriate, it
will be taken.”

Brown did act against Stuart, forcing his resignation.

When investigators with the disciplinary panel began to
dig into Stuart’s record, they found he had actually been reprimanded years
before for another flawed prosecution.

In 1995, Stuart insinuated that a gun in the possession of the defendant at the
time of his arrest was the same gun used in an attempted murder and robbery.
But Stuart had a ballistics report showing that wasn’t true: Bullet casings
found at the scene of the crime didn’t match the gun.

The defendant, Jay Walters, was convicted and sentenced to
up to 25 years in prison. He served nearly four years before his conviction was
overturned by an appellate court, which found that Stuart advocated
“a position which he knew to be false” -- an “abrogation of his responsibility
as a prosecutor.”

The investigation of the 1995 case ended with the disciplinary panel issuing
Stuart a so-called letter
of caution warning him not to breach ethical boundaries again. It was never
made public. Stuart’s bosses in the Queens District Attorney’s office say they
did not know about it.

Years later, when the panel looking into the Johnson case asked
about the Walters matter, Stuart blamed his misconduct on inexperience. He then
asserted that in the Johnson case, while he should have acknowledged seeing the
key missing witness, he did not intend to mislead the court.

“I certainly made an error or mistake in judgment,” he said.
He claimed that he had telephoned Knight the day before he was asked about her
whereabouts by Judge Rios, but that he had not reached her. He said he based
his reply to the judge solely on that.

Stuart had told the court a “flat-out lie,” she said, because he was afraid the
witness’ testimony would undermine his case or that Rios would decide Stuart
had withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.

In September 2005 – more than 18 months after it had
opened its investigation of Stuart -- the committee suspended Stuart’s license to practice law.

After his resignation, he landed a job in private practice
doing civil litigation, a job he then lost along with his license.

“I was disappointed that I had to let him go,” said David Brand, a partner at
the Long Island firm Stuart had joined. “He was actually a good, effective trial
lawyer.”

In March 2010, New York’s appellate division denied
Stuart’s application to renew his law license, saying he “does not demonstrate
the requisite fitness and character to practice law.”

Stuart – who still has an active license to practice
law in New Jersey – today works as a math teacher at Queens Vocational
and Technical High School.

Johnson, who remains to this day in a prison cell in part
because of Stuart, said he feels sorry for the former prosecutor.

“I wish he just learned a lesson, but he didn’t have to pay for it with
his whole career,” Johnson said of the severity of Stuart’s discipline. “You’re
held to a high standard. Don’t set people up… if there is evidence of someone’s
innocence, explore it… They know when something’s not right.”

The Retrial:

Eugene Reibstein, a high-level Queens assistant district attorney who had tried dozens of
homicides and felonies, was tasked with mounting the second prosecution of Johnson
in July 2003.

Reibstein visited Hanley in prison and got
him to recant his recantation. Despite his sworn affidavit claiming he had lied
at the first trial, Hanley told the same story again during the second
trial.

This time, however, Johnson’s lawyer got to put Knight on the stand. She testified
that Johnson couldn’t have been responsible for the crime because he was far
smaller than the man she saw that night. She also stuck to her earlier sworn
statements that Hanley, the alleged eyewitness, had been asleep in her
apartment at the time of the shooting.
Ramdass, Hanley’s girlfriend at the time,
testified that she was in fact asleep with Hanley during the shooting.

It was not enough. Reibstein
said that Knight and Ramdass were lying in his
summation.

But ultimately it was Vann’s mother, Mary Puryear, who shifted the balance of the trial.

A New York Daily News story described the jury as
“transfixed” when Puryear, Vann’s mother, testified
from a wheelchair and tearfully described how Vann told her “Mama, I’ve been
shot. Tyronne did it.’”

Johnson was convicted again and sentenced to 20 years to life.

The controversy around the case did not end there.

After the trial, Judge Rios’ law clerk wrote a letter to
the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, accusing him of
coaching the prosecution in private discussions during the second trial.

Johnson’s lawyers petitioned for yet another trial. At a hearing,
Rios admitted to speaking to Reibstein in his
chambers, but said he could not remember the details of the conversation.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Matthew D’Emic
ruled
that while the conversation “strayed into improper territory,” it did not
prejudice the verdict against Johnson.

Now 36, Johnson has spent the last 13 years behind bars.
His lawyers maintain he never received a fair trial. And they have now applied
to a federal court to grant him yet one more trial.

“It doesn’t get easier,” Johnson said in the interview at Sing Sing last year. “You see your Mom get old. You see your
children getting older. Relationships fall apart. People die. It gets harder as
you go along. My son was five years old when I got locked up. My son is 17 on
Friday.”

If he’s eligible for parole, Johnson’s soonest possible release date would be in
2020. But to qualify, inmates usually have to express remorse for their crimes.
He says he’ll never do that.

This story reeks corruption at its core! Was the gun that the victim was shot with ever found, fingerprinted and matched up with mr. johnsons own prints? There had to be other witnesses to prove Mr. Johnsons innocents. Is it NOT possible that Mr. Leroy Vann’s mom heard the name ‘‘Tyrone’’ and believed that that was the name of the shooter? I can understand as a mother under tremendes and stressfull circumstances of seeing her son die - that she probably heard what she thought was her sons killer, when in actuality it wasn’t all she heard..i’m sorry for her loss but lets not continue to let an innocent person continue to pay for something that hasn’t been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt..I’m going to watch this case progress very closely..

The question that keeps coming up in my mind is, why is the lying prosecutor not serving time along with the presumtively innocent Tyrone Johnson? He gets to teach kids in an actual school???
And how could a jury convict because of a name coincidence? Tyrone Johnson is the only Tyrone in Queens? This case is an astonishing miscarriage of justice and it is unclear how/why his conviction wasn’t simply discarded as hopelessly corrupted.

This is an epidemic. Although my case in Kentucky is a wrongful conviction for a non-violent crime, as I look at information I am receiving, 7 years later and too late for remedy, I am realizing the entire case was fabricated. I believe I am the only person in KY to have an affirmed conviction for a DUI without any drugs or alcohol detected in the blood, and without any bad driving. Case is affirmed, opinion published. After the no reasonable suspicion stop and 1.25-hour long stop that revealed no illegal drugs, the cop claimed that I put an illegal ‘drug item’ in his car. The ‘drug item,’ according to documentsthat I am seeing for the first time now, changed in identity 3 times, resided, at least for some period, in two towns at the same time, changed color, changed physical description, and lost 86% of its weight for no reason. No signatures or weights on the log, to verify anything. KSP lab tech testified at trial as an ‘expert’ in drug effects of a Rx drug that I happened to have, and with made-up observations that were never shared in any pre-trial hearing, the lying, totally unqualified lab tech assured the jury that I was ‘high,’ and the lab had no capability to test…when in fact, he did test.

I was absolutely shocked when I started looking at other KY cases, because unqualified ‘experts’ have been fabricating credentials and testifying in cases for years, even death cases, but also toxicology, ‘shaken baby,’ arson, accident reconstruction, and others. What’s even weirder is, the more I investigated one bogus ‘expert’ in particular, the KY Court of Appeals site appears to have scrubbed cases where this guy testified for the Commonwealth. Could this be some kind of a glitch maybe?

Email me if you want the name for the ‘expert’ I am talking about above. This person has testified in death cases here and elsewhere, claims he is a PharmD, but in reality his license was revoked in CA years ago. He had filed for reciprocity in other states before the revocation, and no one bothered to check. I don’t see any evidence at all that this was disclosed. I don’t have a problem if the person was revoked someplace, if it’s disclosed somewhere, but I see no evidence that it was.

If this piece of dung lied under oath(perjury)then why hasn’t he been charged with that crime? Sort of reminds me of a lying cop in the infamous OJ trial who has proffited from his crime! I will never vote to convict anyone,if called for jury duty unless there is an impartial witness and not a jailhouse stooley and never on the basis of prosecutor or police testimony!

Welcome to New York. Just imagine how it feels every time a black man walks on the street in this city. I am a practicing lawyer who is black and I get crooked looks from cops ALL of the time. I’ve been illegally stopped and have had them follow me/watching me from their cruisers while I walk to the subway or whatever. The only time I don’t get bothered is when I am in a suit because I was in court. Welcome to New York.

This is outrageous! Why is it not headline news, everywhere? What sort if legal system operates like this? Mr Johnson deserves to have the charges dismissed and to be released. If this isn’t reasonable doubt I don’t know what is!

Great writing! But the ever present slowness of justice in this case is reprehensible. Just this past week we were treated to another"fine example’ of the US justice system and its effects on black people with the treatment of an Arizona man wrongfully convicted of a crime in 1970 and having served 41 years in prison was disgracefully threatened with having to spend additional time in prison if he would not plead ‘no contest” to the charges after they were successfully challenged on appeal and thrown out. The prosecutor in this case is no less morally challenged!

That the prosecutor was corrupt is no surprise. That he was caught is a surprise. That he was disciplined is a shock.

Every time an innocent person is convicted, a prosecutor made false statements in court. There appears to be little appetite for revisiting those cases and punishing the lying prosecutors. It should be standard procedure.

The standard of not allowing prosecutors to make statements “known to be false” is far too low. The prosecutor should be forced, when making statements of fact, to make statements they know to be true, or that a reasonable person could know to be true based on the evidence presented.

Like so many aspects of the US justice system the reality of the actual level of corruption and incompetence that permeates so much of the system is staggering. Every judge in America should understand that when you throw into this mess the level of manipulation by the government and collusion especially in drug conspiracy cases you quickly pass into the red zone. Any prosecutor or judge or defense attorney in NY that does not acknowledge the crisis should just as a matter of principle be disbarred immediately. Everybody knows that people are lost in the system sometimes for years because they have not had due-process or because other people have fingered them in order to save their own ass. This week in NY that was even the politicians that got wired up and spied on each other for years at the direction of NY prosecutors. Clearly if you look at many of these cases people have not been permitted the evidence to mount a defense. Then it is just widespread practice to “make stuff up.” In fact many of the big cases are in fact long set up stings where they have been manipulating people at times for years - just go look at Albany New York.

I suffered over 18 years in NY prisons until proven factually innocent based on police and prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Tyrone Johnson is a good man who I know while stuck with him under horrible conditions that could have been prevented had the prosecutors in our cases had done their jobs. I pray that things work out or him, which is why I continue to speak across America against police and prosecutor misconduct to help improve our flawed criminal justice system.http://abcnews.go.com/US/fernando-bermudez-sues-ny-30-million/story?id=12985414 (* Wait a few seconds for video to begin)

People ask me all the time how I can defend people who have committed crimes. I always tell them it is because DA’s overcharge and officers (some of them) lie to get convictions. My job is to make sure the punishment fits the crime. This case is a perfect example of why I do what I do - to keep people honest. Yet, as a criminal defense lawyer, I suffer that stigma that I “lie to get my clients out of trouble.” Quite the opposite is true! Thanks for the reminder that persistence pays off! I hope the Feds get Tyrone what he deserves - to be a free man.

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